


Take This Villanelle (Take Its Broken Form In Your Hand)

by LookingForOctober



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-25
Updated: 2013-01-25
Packaged: 2018-01-07 00:00:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1113077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookingForOctober/pseuds/LookingForOctober
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A villanelle about dancing in hell, by William the Bloody.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take This Villanelle (Take Its Broken Form In Your Hand)

**Author's Note:**

> This work was originally published on the livejournal community sb_fag_ends, in response to the prompt "Vienna" (by way of Leonard Cohen's Take This Waltz).
> 
> This is a sequel to Chaos in 17 Lines, set several years later.

In Vienna, where doves find damnation, in the midst of a waltz of desire  
We will dance on the tip of creation, and we'll fall from the depths of the sky.  
This dance is our hope of salvation, and we'll dance 'til we set loose the fire.

Seductive music is playing, demons with leers play the lyre,  
You've set down your stake and your slaying for a deal that could make us both fry.  
But your hips sway like pure inspiration in the midst of a waltz of desire.

Grey brittle smoke at the window, the dust of a long buried pyre,  
Years stretch behind us in limbo, they're the desert that seared us bone dry.  
This dance is our hope of salvation, and we'll dance 'til we set loose the fire.

The toss of your head in the revel, the slap of your feet on the spire,  
Bloody hell, I thought _I_ was the devil, but you'll give me a run for my pride.  
So I lose myself in the sensation, in the midst of a waltz of desire.

When your lips stretch the length of a ballroom, when your heart moans and stutters and tires,  
And when every last stumble's consumed, our broken waltz still will not die.  
We dance to end endless starvation, and we'll dance 'til we set loose the fire.

And I'll dance with you in Vienna, as the doves fly us higher and higher,  
Death mumbling dreams of forever, and a moment that hears no goodbye.  
And we'll dance 'til we set loose the fire with the force of our waltz, our desire.  
Take this waltz, love, it's all that there is.


End file.
